


The Hunt

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Coworkers to lovers, Friends to Lovers, Gen, erotica not porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2906576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It'salways kind of fun to let Lestrade take the lead and be the aggressor. It's even more fun when Mycroft doesn't have to be entirely meek and fragile to make it work. In this the hunted is as hungry in his own way as the hunter, and every bit as willing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hunt

“More wine, Mr. Holmes?” the waiter asked, towel over his arm, wrapped bottle held carefully.

Mycroft glanced over his reading glasses and across the little table in the Diogenes Club’s dim, peaceful private dining room, to where DCI Lestrade hunched, head low over a muddle of notebooks, file folders, photos, tablets, and legal pads. “Lestrade?”

“Huh?” Lestrade looked up and over the top line of his own reading glasses, mind still clearly half in the work he’d been doing. It took the older man a second to realize the waiter was hovering, waiting. “Oh…no. No—cuppa would be nice, though. Coffee, tea, either one. Just need something to clear my head.”

Mycroft nodded. “Likewise.” He turned to the waiter and murmured for a moment. He turned back. “Given a choice, would you prefer a strong Assam, a gunpowder, or a Blue Mountain coffee?”

Lestrade looked at him, then said, in patient amusement. “Black, greenish, and coffee. Right?”

Mycroft couldn’t keep a spark of amusement from his own eyes. Lestrade might be a goldfish—but he was a goldfish with a disarming sense of humor about his own limitations. “Quite right. Preferences?”

“None. It’s all good.”

Mycroft arched his brows. “I see,” he said, teasing slightly. He gave the order to the waiter, then turned back to his associate. “You do know what John and Sherlock use that phrase to mean, don’t you?”

“Yeah—they mean that they’re a couple of inexperienced straight men too chicken to admit queer makes ‘em nervous,” Lestrade said, absently, as he leaned back over his paperwork. “They trot out their little metrosexual PC mantra, and run like hell.” He frowned slightly and circled something on one of the legal pads.

“Mmmm,” Mycroft said, wry and resigned. “John shouts, ‘Not-gay, not-gay, not-gay.’ Sherlock…”

Lestrade snorted his laughter without looking up. “Sherlock shouts, ‘la-la-la-la-la, I’m not _listening!’_ And then he rushes off to find his smelling salts.”

Mycroft laughed, then. “Well said. Yes. I’m afraid that’s my brother. In this, if nothing else, he’s convinced that ignorance is bliss—and as always, he follows his bliss.”

“Mmm. Well. People do,” Lestrade said, and pushed a photo toward Mycroft. “Look at that, will you? You’re familiar with Sherlock’s bellwethers. Is that Bean-Breath Jack?”

Mycroft frowned, leaning over the glossy print. “Mmmm. Yes. I think so. What’s he doing there?”

“Don’t know. Shouldn’t be.” He jotted more notes, then pulled out his phone. He tapped in a text message, and then put the phone down. He began gathering up the mess around him. “Well. That’s that until Sherlock does some digging.”

The waiter returned with a trolley supporting two pots—a tall, slim coffee pot, and a short, fat tea pot—along with with the rest of the set—cups, sugar, cream, a plate of shortbread and a bowl of grapes and pears.

“I’ll play mother,” Mycroft said, firmly. “Coffee or gunpowder tea?”

The man once again looked cannily over the tops of his glasses, eyes alert and humorous. After a second he said, “Gunpowder, then. I drink coffee all day the rest of the time.”

“Sugar?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

Mycroft doled out tea, dropped sugar in. Forced himself not to shudder when he asked if Lestrade wanted milk.

“Not with green,” Lestrade said. Mycroft let out his breath in relief.

“Thank God.”

“I do have some taste.” He met Mycroft’s eyes—and Mycroft felt the sudden shiver that went with being _twinkled_ at: glittering, laughing dark eyes, even the trace of a dimple.

He gathered himself and bent over his own cup—sugar and a thin disk of lemon sliced paper thin. He passed the plate of shortbread. “I never doubted you for a moment.”

“Liar.” Lestrade was holding back laughter. “You screamed it with every inch of your body. ‘Please don’t let him ask for milk in his gunpowder.’ You’re really very communicative. Almost as easy to read as Sherlock.”

Mycroft looked up, then, stunned. “What?”

“And now you’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God—what secrets have I been giving away!’ Don’t worry. I think it takes a certain knack to read a Holmes.”

Mycroft shivered… He’d been thinking exactly that, almost word for word. “You appear to be blessed with the knack, then.”

“Scares you a bit,” Lestrade went on, even as he raised his tea and took a sip. “Excites you a bit, too, though. Oooh, look at that—hair on the nape of your neck rising?”

Without thinking about it, without realizing, Mycroft licked his lower lip then tucked it in under his front teeth, biting softly as he fretted. He forced himself to frown—then said, “You’re baiting me.”

“No. You’re bait—I’m the predator,” Lestrade grinned. Then cocked his head. His eyes narrowed—then the pupils flared. “And you’re enjoying it very much.”

Mycroft was.

“I’m certainly not,” he snipped, and forced himself to take a drink of tea.

Lestrade just watched him. Mycroft felt the goose-bumps rise—heard his own breath shift, moving from steady calm to short, shallow, uneven little breaths. He swallowed, and watched Lestrade’s eyes follow the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple above the wide-spread cutaway collar and the full double-Windsor tie-knot.

He’d refused for years to let himself think about how attractive Lestrade could be—but there he was, owning his space on the other side of the table, dark eyes centered with huge black pupils, face a mask of collected attention and hungry laughter. It all just worked, didn’t it? The silver-dapple hair, the body that was lean and well-kept but mature, now. The clothes—proper for his position as a DCI, but never even remotely fussy—casual, confident, and comfortable. His hands managed everything neatly and well—his pens, the papers, the phone, the tea cup. His glasses sat low on a tidy, faintly upturned Celtic nose. He reminded Mycroft of the Cheshire cat leering out over the arguing court cards illustration of Alice in Wonderland with a merry, knowing smile on his face, in perfect control.

“I believe you’ll find I’m usually the hunter, not the hunted,” Mycroft forced himself to say—calm, calm, calm. Not excited at all. Not intrigued. “You’re the one who should be worried.”

“Liar,” Lestrade said again. His voice dropped, then. “You’ve gone all this time without making a move, like a deer in the understory, watching all the time. I wonder what you’d do if I moved…”

“Nothing,” Mycroft insisted, and pushed the bowl of grapes and pears toward Lestrade. “Nothing at all.”

“Mmmmmm?” The sound was deep and rumbly, and it set shivers running up and down Mycroft’s spine. Unmentionable things happened in unmentionable parts of his body, and suddenly his vest rubbed a bit too firmly against his nipples and his usually loose boxers felt too tight. When Mycroft didn’t answer, Lestrade took a pear from the dish and hefted it softly, letting the firm but tender fruit drop into his palm. He sniffed it, eyes still locked to Mycroft’s—then, casually, easily, without drama, he bit in, white teeth cutting into spring green skin rouged with a flush of tender red. Juice flooded out, dampened his lips, dripped on his chin, trickled into his fingers. He paused. He wiped his chin with the back of one wrist, then licked lips, wrist, and then, one at a time, the fingers that had held the pear, transferring the fruit to his free hand for that moment. He bit again, and again his tongue flicked out.

“Good pear,” he said, softly.

“I’m sure—“ Mycroft had to stop. His voice was rough and thick. He drew a deep breath and tried again. “I’m sure it is. The Diogenes keeps a very good kitchen.”

“I’m sure it does.”

Mycroft straightened. “I’m not afraid of you, you know.”

Lestrade laughed. “Of course you’re not,” he said, smiling. “You know I’m not going to make a single move until you signal you want me to…. And it’s driving you right crazy, too, isn’t it?”

“It most certainly is not,” Mycroft sniffed, again forcing himself to look away, down at the grapes, at the wicked, wicked pears, at the shortbread sitting in long and tawny phallic soldiers on their little plate. “I’m quite relieved you know the limits expected of a professional.”

“We’re off the clock, you know. ‘Professional’ isn’t entirely an issue, between one thing and another. Not that I’d impose…”

“Of course not.”

“Better that way, I suspect.” His voice was laughing, though, suggesting he knew just how much Mycroft found his treasonous body and heart disagreed with his usual norms.

Mycroft couldn’t answer.

“Your tea is getting cold,” Lestrade whispered. “Best drink it up.”

Mycroft blindly raised the cup and gulped it down.

“I’ll play mother,” Lestrade said, softly, and reached out for the pot, rising as he did so.

Without even thinking, Mycroft rose and stepped back, feeling that elegant body of Lestrade’s in motion, sensing its proximity. He stared, stepped back again, and found himself with his back to the wall.

Lestrade looked at him over those devastating glasses, smiling. “I won’t make a move, Mike. Not unless you want me to.”

Mycroft blinked, his own glasses slightly fogged where the damp of his eyes had condensed. He swallowed. “Of course you won’t.”

“’Course I won’t.”

Mycroft sighed, then. “You’re an utter bastard,” he said, resigned.

“Mmmmm?”

“Fine,” Mycroft said, a crooked grin starting. “Fine. All right. I confess. I’m—intrigued. Now get over here.”

“Bossy,” Lestrade said, with a grin, and in two steps had crossed the space between them, pinned Mycroft against the wall, and nuzzled his way into a kiss.

For the rest of the night, Mycroft was willing prey, and in the morning he woke his new lover to go hunting again.


End file.
